Clayton Boone: What were some of your movies?
James Whale: This and that. The only ones you maybe have heard of are the “Frankenstein” pictures.
Boon: Really? “Frankenstein” and “Bride of” and “Son of” and all the rest?
Whale: I made only the first two. The others were done by hacks.
—Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters
Rowland Lee’s Son of Frankenstein did many things: It housed the final appearance of Boris Karloff as the Monster, it served as the plot outline for Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein, and it proved that you can play one hell of a game of darts without even trying if a one-armed police chief is breathing down your neck as he peers at you through his spit-polished monocle. In the tradition of sequels, Lee’s production falls below expectations, not even attempting to esteem to the bar which James Whale set with his previous two installments in the Frankenstein series.
Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), his wife, Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson), and son, Peter (Donnie Dunagan), claim the family inheritance, including the infamous Frankenstein castle. Upon arrival, the Baron receives a less-than-warm welcome from the townspeople, spiteful of the presence another Frankenstein in the wake of family’s history within the village throughout the years. As he searches the estate, the Baron discovers Ygor (Bela Lugosi), his father’s assistant, reclusively residing in his father’s laboratory. Surprisingly, his father’s creation (Boris Karloff) is also inhabiting the dwelling, yet in the depths of a coma. After playing to Wolf’s sympathies, the Baron agrees to revive Ygor’s friend. However, after so doing, Ygor uses the Monster as an assassin in order to avenge the two remaining council members who sentenced Ygor to hang on the charge of grave robbing. As upheaval begins to percolate within in the town, Police Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) probes into the case and attempts to find the murderous culprit.
Lee first asks us to forget the unforgettable–Whale’s productions and the events contained therein–as we are introduced, not to Fritz or to Karl, but to Ygor who, nonetheless, is the same individual who opened the monster series by assisting his master in exhuming corpses before being killed off by the monster (frustratingly, a character named Fritz, played by Perry Ivins, appears during the course of the film). Also, we are to conveniently omit questioning how the Frankenstein laboratory, even though we watched it crumble to the ground at the finale of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, has miraculously reerected itself atop how the Monster escaped death under said conditions (Whale at least granted us such explicative courteously with his follow-up) and why he has a full head of hair once again.
Once more, the Monster isn’t the focal point of evil. In Lee’s vision, Ygor’s plot for vengeance establishes the antagonistic ground for the outstanding performance by Lugosi which, in many respects, is the highlight of the production aside from the fact that the Baron can hit two bull’s-eyes for every five tosses without looking as he converses with the Inspector while engaging in a game of darts. However, the Baron himself is arguably as condemnable as his father’s assistant in that, though he is aware of the events which the Inspector is attempting to validate, he remains silent. Yet, his comeuppance never appears as he redeems himself at the final moment as a forced ending quickly resolves the lackadaisical plot.
Most every aspect of the film seems misconstrued, beginning with the acting of the primary cast–all of which border on satirical in a film which otherwise plays it straight throughout, the most annoying performance coming from Dunagan as he squeaks and squeals his lines scene after scene as his mother serves as a trophy wife of which, if she were to have been written the part of said inanimate object, would have probably contributed more to the film. This says nothing of the characterization, the most condemnable of which is the figure of Krogh, a Strangelove predecessor which, as previously stated, is grossly out of place as he polishes his monocle after positioning it in is prosthetic limb. It only seems fitting that the dialogue is equally reprehensible as we hear, once again, “He’s [not “it” mind you] alive” alongside Ygor’s clincher to his argument that his master should reanimate the creature: The Monster, by definition, is the Baron’s brother. I would posit the unexplained lapse in the Monster’s ability to speak as suspect after his empathy-inducing lines delivered in Whale’s Bride but, considering the adult dialogue surrounding the Monster, I’m almost grateful the screenwriter, Wyllis Cooper, chose not to attempt convey his reading of inarticulate language (perhaps, in this case, silence is the only logical step below what he scribbled for the vocal roles). Lastly, the film’s events take place in what could easily be dubbed the House that Caligari Built in its less than humble homage to the German masterpiece.
Rowland Lee’s Son of Frankenstein, even by mediocre standards, fails as a sequel. His shift from substance to fluff is perhaps represented in his risqué presentation at the time of a corpse trampled by a horse-drawn carriage and Krogh’s citation that, “One doesn’t easily forget, Herr Baron, an arm torn out by the roots.” But, what can be said of a film which hosts a hostile town which revolts when another member of a family who was responsible for killing off members of its populace throughout the years nonetheless changing its title to the family’s name? Of course, these–alongside many, many others–are all reasons why Mel Brooks took more from Lee’s production in the Frankenstein series than any other when making Young Frankenstein.
Sadistic, ironic trivia tidbit: Lee’s production houses the longest running time of any of the films in the Universal Monster Series.
-Egregious Gurnow
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